In Australia, we have a thing for social realism. Cloudstreet, The Slap, The Thorn Birds- the vast majority of our canonical national texts are firmly rooted in the everyday reality of Australian life. And, while Tim Winton claims that “ordinary life overflows with divine grace”, Patrick White decried the predominant mode of Australian literature as […]

Bronwyn Mehan runs Spineless Wonders, a publishing company devoted to producing quality short Australian stories in print, digital and audio forms. Here, she talks about the perks and pitfalls of literature in its more unusual forms.  In general, short stories are neither as lucrative nor as popular as the novel form. Why do you think […]

Pat Grant is a cartoonist writer and zine maker. He has recently completed a graphic novel called Blue, which is part autobiography, part science fiction. What’s more important for creating good comics: the writing or the art? Which appeals to you more? Well, I guess that the problem with that question is the idea that […]

Mark Dapin is the author of Spirit House, King of the Cross and Strange Country. He has been the editor-in-chief of Australian Consolidated Press’ men’s magazines, and is a hugely popular columnist. You’ve had a pretty varied career- you were the editor of a men’s magazine for quite a while, but you’ve also written quite […]

Lee Tran Lam is the host of the Australian music show, Local Fidelity, on FBi94.5FM, and writes the popular food blog, The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry. She has written for the Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Food Guide, is a freelance contributor to magazines such as Inside Out, and has her own popular podcast. You […]

Allison Tait is a freelance journalist with more than 20 years’ experience writing for many of Australia’s major magazine titles. She is the author of Careers Mums, the blog, Life in a Pink Fibro, and a novel to be published in 2013.  She speaks here about her time at Vogue, her fledgling fiction career, and […]

Peter Minter is a poet, scholar and editor. In each of these fields, much of his work is devoted to one of the most pressing, contentious issues in the contemporary era: the environment. He has published six volumes of poetry, edited a number of anthologies, and works as the poetry editor at Overland.  Here, he […]

Zena Shapter is an award-winning British-Australian writer, a specialist in the weird, wacky, wonderful world of speculative fiction.  Here, she talks to Georgia Behrens about discipline, distance and the dangers of being a copycat… For those who might not be that familiar with you or your work- tell us a bit about yourself. Well, I’m […]

Georgia Behrens is overawed by the next star of “The Short Story” panel, Pip Smith. When she first decided to host a story-telling night in the front room of her Newtown flat, I can’t really imagine that Pip Smith thought she was going to land herself a small literary empire. With the aims of a) […]